Visual Novel /
Invisible Apartment

Edit Locked

Invisible Apartment is a set of Visual Novels by Vysoko Anime Production. The games are:

Advertisement:

Invisible Apartment  the first game, being a short introduction to the wider story. It's available free as of late 2015.

Invisible Apartment 2  a sequel.

Invisible Apartment Zero  a prequel.

Invisible Apartment 3  an upcoming sequel which will finish the story. Due in 2016.

Invisible Apartment's setting is basically Cyberpunk or Post-Cyberpunk. The story starts when Kacey, a hacker, tries to track down another hacker who nearly got her arrested, and gets caught up in a struggle between the government and those resisting it.

Advertisement:

The series provides examples of:

Artificial Intelligence: Basic AIs are common enough (one is found controlling an apartment door, for example), but aren't supposed to reach the stage where they become "awakened" (which seems to indicate human-like attitudes towards survival and independence). Kacey is assisted by an awakened AI in her computer "mask" (which she simply calls Mask)  he's anxious that he be given the opportunity to upload himself to safety if Kacey is caught rather than have his core wiped like another AI might.

Everything Is Online: The government's desire to make everything secure and controllable has led to this, which actually creates unnecessary vulnerabilities. For example, Kacey has a real chance of getting into the government's central databases simply by hacking a café's payment processing system, because that's connected to the tax authorities (to avoid cheating) and the tax authority databases are linked to every other kind of record.

Advertisement:

Dueling Hackers: Kacey tries to go after a hacker who nearly got her caught, but since the hacker can't be tracked directly, the "duel" eventually involves physically trying to track down the actual locations from which the other hacker could connecting.

Human Popsicle: The Sleepers aren't technically frozen (it's some kind of liquid suspension), but it plays out much the same anyway. People are put into stasis if their illness can't currently be treated but might be treatable in the future. However, it's revealed that the old ruling families are secretly using the same facilities as a kind of Cryo Prison for people they'd rather be rid of. (One such person, though, actually got sent there on purpose, after getting a chip implanted which would allow them enough consciousness to connect to a computer network. Since they're supposedly in a coma, people won't suspect them of being a hacker.)

Linear Visual Novel: In the first game, players are able to make choices, but making the wrong ones just causes Kacey to get arrested, requiring a restart or reload.

People Jars: Sleepers are put in tanks which keep them alive, but in a coma. This is supposed to be done for medical purposes, but is revealed to also be done to people who are inconvenient to the government.

Post Cyber Punk: The setting may lean more this way than towards traditional Cyberpunk. On the one hand, it's highly regulated and involves powerful people covertly using technology for their own interests. On the other hand, people who aren't on the government's wanted lists don't seem to have as bad as a typical cyberpunk Dystopia, and there are people on the inside who try to do the right thing.

Sinister Surveillance: The city is subject to extensive monitoring. The "invisible apartment" of the title is called that because it's one place which seems to off the registers.

The Spook: Kacey has a degree of this, slipping through the gaps of the highly regulated society she lives in while leaving as little trace as possible. However, the reason that she does so is that she has a criminal record from before she dropped out of sight, so she isn't completely off the books.

You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Kacey changes her hair colour to help disguise herself, but doesn't stick to natural shades. She starts the first game with purple hair, but has gone green by the end of it. (The prequel and sequel show her with black and blonde hair, though.)

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy